Elijah Parish Lovejoy

Elijah Parish Lovejoy (9 November 1802-7 November 1837) was an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist who was infamously killed by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois in 1837.

Biography
Elijah Parish Lovejoy was born in Albion, Maine in 1802, and he attended Waterville College in his home state. In 1827, after graduation, he settled in St. Louis, Missouri, and he became the editor of the anti-Jacksonian newspaper the St. Louis Observer and ran a school. In 1831, he became an ordained Presbyterian minister and set up a church in St. Louis. His editorials in his newspaper criticized slavery and other church denominations, and, in May 1836, he moved across the river to Alton, Illinois after anti-abolitionists destroyed his printing press for the third time. In 1837, he started the Alton Observer, another abolitionist paper. On 7 November 1837, a pro-slavery mob attacked the warehouse where he had his fourth printing press. When one of the mob moved to set the building on fire, Lovejoy came out with a pistol to stop him. The pro-slavery men shot him dead and then threw his printing press into the Mississippi, and his brother Owen Lovejoy went on to become the leader of the Illinois abolitionists.